A Study In Luck
by TheBlackLipstick
Summary: Sherlock meets his worst enemy, Luck, with dire consequences.
1. Chapter 1

A Study In Luck

**One**

**Fortunately, Unfortunately. **

Hi guys,

This story was written as collaboration between myself, and a most estimable fellow, my best friend, Mazha Da Badger AKA (.net/u/2919158/Person_without_a_FF_N_account). Hope you enjoy, and remember we own nothing! ;),

Fisheh and Fiyah XOXOXOOXOXOXOXOXOXOOX

* * *

><p>'Sherlock!'<p>

'Nrmmphh...'

'Get Up!'

'Flerrrgghh...'

'_The house is on fire!'_

'Tell me about it tomorrowww, Johnn...'

John had a brainwave.

'You've got a case!'

'WHOOPEE! WHERE? WHO?' Sherlock was up and dancing like an enchanted truncheon. 'WHAT WAS THE MURDER WEAPON?'

John smirked and went to forage for milk.

'Oh...' Sherlock groaned and went over to the table. 'What's for breakfast?'

'Just cereal, I'm afraid'.

'How dismal..'

'We don't have any bread, because _someone _refused to go shopping.'

Sherlock merely grunted, as if intelligible words weren't worth wasting on John. He seated himself, and began eating cornflakes out of the packet.

'Sherlock! Save some for me!' said John, hastily retrieving the packet.

'Errr... that stuff is disgusting, John, how long's it been in the cupboard?'

John glanced at the best before date, his eyebrows raised.

'I deduce from your facial expression that it belonged to the tenants before us'.

'Quite so... I might just go over to Sarah's for breakfast.'

'What? And leave me here with half a packet of mouldy cornflakes and less than a quarter of a carton of milk, I don't think so!'

John gave up on that conversation and began pouring water from kettle into two mugs.

'I have to go to St. Bart's today, pick up some results.'

'Oh, so you do have something to do when I'm out'.

'Not really, just clearing up a few lose ends.'

'Then you'll go shopping?'

'NO!'

'Sherlock, if you put it off one more time, we'll be eating fluff and toenail clippings'.

'I wouldn't mind'.

'Yes, you would Sherlock, our current quoter of food consists of those cornflakes, that milk, and a bendy carrot that smells a bit-'

'All right, all right, I'll go shopping!'

John smiled in silent victory. 'I'll write you a list, shall I?'

Sherlock wasn't listening, he was examining yesterday's edition of the paper for ''orrible' murders.

* * *

><p>Sherlock shrugged his coat on and pulled the scarf ends through their loop. John had all ready gone out, leaving (or rather planting) a piece of crumpled notebook paper in Sherlock's coat pocket. Sherlock dug it out grudgingly, read it and snorted at the contents.<p>

'Pah! Liver! We won't be getting any of _that_!'

Sherlock went about a hundred yards with the list before disposing of it in the litter bin at the end of Baker Street.

After going to retrieve a trolley, Sherlock made for the automatic doors. They took their time, opening only a millisecond before the detective reached them. He hesitated only a moment, and after dissolving the wince from his face, Sherlock proceded.

Sherlock started well, by procuring a loaf of bread and some marmalade (John's favourite). He bought coleslaw, mint sauce, a chicken, some cheese and a romcom. But then he spotted a carousel by the cereal, sporting a large number of ballerina dolls with unnaturally large eyes.

'What,' said Sherlock to himself, picking one up by the leg, '_is this_?'

'Thinking of buying that, Sherlock?'

The consulting detective almost jumped. Almost. He put down the doll.

'Mycroft?'

'The very same.'

'Come to spy on me shopping, now are we? Aren't there any dictators to assassinate this week?'

Mycroft examined his nails, as compliant as a rock.

Silence, as the younger brother put Wheetos and a packet of peanuts into the trolley. After a few aisles, Mycroft succumbed and leaned over Sherlock's shoulder.

'What are you buying?' With an interest thinly veiled by casualness.

'A four pack of baked beans! And stop peering over my shoulder like an overgrown penguin, its disturbing!' Sherlock bolted into the next aisle, wielding his trolley like a battering ram, nearly knocking over a stand of fairy cakes. He paused briefly to swipe a six-pack of apple pies from a shelf, aware that Mycroft paced calmly, but creepily after him.

The older brother twirled his umbrella, discovering Sherlock with his head bent low pretending to be interested in a stack of tarts.

'You hate Cherry Bakewells', Mycroft's voice muttered close to his ear.

The consulting detective hummed distractedly, '_Like one that on a lonesome road, Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend, Doth close behind him tread_. Hmm? Well I've changed.'

Sherlock hauled in some pasta sauce and headed for the toilet roll aisle.

'Is this yours?' Mycroft said producing John's list.

'No.' Said Sherlock without looking.

'It's in John's handwriting.'

'I didn't agree with it. Wait! You've been fishing around in bins looking for my rubbish?' Sherlock snorted.

'I make it my business to know what you get up to.'

'You must be desperate.'

'I could say the same to you, you would never go shopping if you didn't have others things to excuse you.'

It started raining outside, small hard drops that pummelled the pavement like falling gravel stones.

'This really has been my day', said Sherlock, loading food onto a conveyor belt, his voice spiked with sarcasm.

* * *

><p>'That's forty-eight pounds seventy-eight, love'.<p>

Sherlock tutted in his usual way at the (in his opinion) extortionate prices and got out his wallet. The only thing in it was a large hole.

'I'll pay', said a voice that was becoming increasingly annoying.

Now, normally, Sherlock would never let Mycroft pay, but when he imagined the consequences of his not bringing any shopping, he sullenly agreed.

Outside, the rain was increasing in strength, plastering Sherlock's hair to his face.

'You could come and stand under my umbrella', suggested Mycroft.

'I have no need of it', said Sherlock icily, and pulled up the collar of his coat.

At that moment a taxi drew up, and Mycroft shook out the water in his umbrella and stepped in. 'Fare ye well, my dear..' He looked Sherlock up and down. 'Saturated brother.' He finished and the cab bore him away, splashing Sherlock's bottom half, making it as wet as the top.

The detective stomped wordlessly off.

* * *

><p>'Hi! How did you get on?' John took the bags from his flatmate, and started putting them away.<p>

Sherlock remained silent.

'Bad day?'

'You could say that.'

'What happened?'

'O hmm, where to start? Well first off this morning I had a breakfast of cornflakes that looked like they had just starred in a zombie movie, then Mycroft started stalking me in the supermarket, I lost all my money! And then - O this is the icing on the cake really! - He _paid _for it! And on top of that it started raining!'

'Aww, unlucky'.

'Pah! Luck!' Sherlock scowled. He drew today's edition of The Times from a shopping bag, and settled down in his chair, knocking over a full cellar of salt in the process.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

A day or two afterwards, and Sherlock found himself going slightly mad. Luck. It couldn't possibly be real, and yet he found himself debating it all the time. On the tube, in the cab on the way home, even in bed, when he was state of semi-conscious reasoning that led him to believe that the problem would be a lot simpler if crocodiles were not that mild khaki green colour.

We now rejoin the un_fortunate _consulting detective, on his way back from St. Bart's where he had acquired no evidence of conceivable interest, and beginning to suppose that if luck was real, his was getting steadily worse.

Suddenly he spotted someone he knew. Langdale Pike, professional gossiper and writer of articles that made the reader feel afterwards as if their brain was being scored with a wire brush. They had been to college together, that is to say: the same college had been blighted by their dual presence. If there was one person who was hated more than Sherlock in that university, it would have been Langdale.

'AAAH, ah! Ah, Sherlock, old pal!' squawked Langdale, in a sentence that was crying out for someone to end its illness.

'Langdale,' muttered Sherlock cautiously, wondering if he wanted to be associated with this person.

A lot of people hated Langdale even more since he became a reporter - the man had a nose as long as an aardvark's and he somehow managed to unearth juicy headlines with it. Sherlock made to get away, but the journalist grabbed his mitten and wrung it fervently.

''_The science of deduction_', catchy title, don't know why I haven't thought of it myself!' he chuckled.'Anyway, fancy meeting you here!How about a coffee?' Langdale jabbed his thumb at a rather dark and dangerous-looking corner, then quickly redirected it to the nearest Starbucks (which are always pretty close in our fair capital).

_Can my day get any worse?_ Thought Sherlock, and declined politely, because he knew Langdale, and a 'coffee' with him usually coincided with the front-page scoop of the tabloids the next morning being about the person unlucky enough to share his company for half an hour. The reporter probably had a tape recorder behind his back right now.

'Err, not right now, thanks, I have a frog to let in - no, I mean a flatmate to dissect.' Sherlock bit his lip and hoped this would be enough of an excuse. Apparently not.

'Oh come _oonnn_, old buddy, you need cheering up, you've got a face like a wraith of hell, had a bad day?'

The detective shrugged, wondering if Langdale actually knew what a wraith of hell looked like, and decided in his line of work he probably had, _and _dished the dirt on them in tabloids not worthy enough to be recycled into toilet paper

'A bit'.

'What did you do? Open an umbrella indoors? Smash a mirror?'

'Excuse me?'

'It brings bad luck-'

'Hey, Pike! You can't stand around chatting, you've got an interview to write up!' An old man with a monocle was standing in the square outside the _Sun _newspaper premises - Logan Foster, the deputy editor of celebrity content. He turned, disappearing back into the beehive of a building. Langdale turned towards the skyscraper, and stuck his tongue out when he thought Sherlock wasn't looking.

'Gotta flyyyyy!' he warbled in a bad imitation of a songbird, 'See you some other time, Holmes!'

The journalist dashed inside and was sucked back into the world of gossip and hearsay.

Sherlock shivered. He hated it when Pike called him that.

Later that night, when John had gone to bed, Sherlock pinched his laptop and began surfing the net. He skimmed through a dozen Fanfiction websites, snorting at the deranged antics of some writers, hacked into the blog of a well-known celebrity, and then, when he could resist it no longer, he hunched over the keyboard and typed into the google search box:

**Methods to ward off bad luck**

And clicked on the Wikipedia link.


End file.
